We Grow Accustomed to the Dark: My Sister, Her Addiction, and an American Crisis

The powerful memoir of a woman who lost her sister to opioid addiction—and a call to arms for a new, compassionate, effective way to understand addiction, and to enable recovery.

In October 2018, thirty-year-old Madelyn Linsenmeir passed away after a decade-long struggle with addiction, leaving behind a young son and a devoted family. Rocked by the death of her younger sister, Kate O’Neill wrote an obituary that went viral and led Kate into a new career as a journalist, writing a yearlong series on the opioid crisis for her hometown newspaper in Vermont and winning awards for her work. We Grow Accustomed to the Dark is O’Neill's stirring, gorgeously written memoir of Maddie’s life, her death, and the things Kate wishes she’d known at the time, which might have helped her sister—and which could help the millions of families still battling this epidemic.

Spanning two timelines—one beginning with Maddie’s birth and one with her death—O'Neill's memoir blends the findings of her investigative reporting with the heart-wrenching experience of loving, trying to help, and eventually losing Maddie. O’Neill’s intimate family story is buttressed by a comprehensive portrait of the socioeconomic and other dimensions of the American opioid crisis, and offers a compelling call to action, highlighting evidence-based harm-reduction strategies that can prevent more deaths. We Grow Accustomed to the Dark is an urgently necessary book, an invaluable contribution to the national conversation about opioids, addiction, and how to show love to the people we care about.